by John Aubrey
This book being finished, or as nearly finished as anything Aubrey ever did (for even the printed book is full of gaps and references and hints for further research) he set out once more upon his travels. But in his seventy-second year he was growing very infirm: January 5th 169 1⁄10, he had written three years before, an apoplectick fitt, circiter 4h. P.M.: and as he passed through his beloved Oxford on his way to Lady Long’s in Wiltshire, death at last struck him down.
Aubrey had no dread of death: If Solomon counts the day of ones death better than the day of ones birth, he had said in his Miscellanies, there can be no Objection why that also may not be reckoned amongst ones Remarkable and Happy days: and his own sudden release from life would no doubt have pleased him, for he was ever concerned at the miseries of old age. Speaking of Gideon de Laune, Apothecary to Mary the Queen mother, a very wise man, and as a signe of it left an estate of 80,000 pounds, he said, Sir William Davenant was his great acquaintance and told me of him, and that after his returne into England he went to visit him, being then octogenary, and very decrepit with the Gowt, but had his sight and understanding. He had a place made for him in the Kitchen chimney; and, non obstante he was master of such an estate, Sir William sawe him slighted not only by his daughter-in-lawe, but by the cooke-mayd, which much affected him—misery of old age. And if the rich were treated thus, how much worse would be the case of a penniless gentleman, for Aubrey was haunted by the thought of John Rushworth, who like himself was an historian and something of a drunkard. Yesterday I saw Mr. Rushworth, he had written to Anthony Wood in 1689, which was a great mortification. He hath quite lost his memory with drinking Brandy: remembred nothing of you, etc. His Landlady wiped his nose like a child. He was about 83, onwards to 84. He had forgot his children before he died.
But however grateful Aubrey would have been to die while he was still vigorous, he would have grieved to know that his passing would go unnoticed. For though he was buried by his young friend Thomas Tanner, now Fellow of All Souls, no tomb was erected, despite the design and the instructions that he had prepared so carefully. I would desire that this Inscription should be a stone about the bigness of a royal sheet of paper scilicet, about 2 foot square. Mr. Reynolds of Lambeth, Stonecutter (Foxhall) who married Mr. Elias Ashmole’s Widow will help me to a Marble as square as an imperial sheet of paper for 8 shillings.
Many years before, Aubrey had discovered a tomb called Gawen’s Barrow on his farm at Broad Chalk. I never was so sacralegious as to disturbe, or rob his urne, he said. Ret his Ashes rest in peace: but I have oftentimes wish’t, that my Corps might be interred by it: but the Lawes Ecclesiastick denie it. Our Bones in consecrated ground never lie quiet: and in London once in ten yeares (or thereabout) the Earth is carried to the Dungwharf. But though Aubrey was not buried in Wiltshire, at least his desire to lie undisturbed in his grave was granted. For the very time and place of his burial was forgotten, and not for one hundred and fifty years was an entry uncovered in the Register of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene—“1697, JOHN AUBERY A Stranger was Buryed June 7th.”
And even now there is no memorial to this famous man at Oxford, save his life’s work safely lodged in Sir Thomas Bodley’s Library across the way.
These remains of his, which were then in the Ashmolean Museum, disprove once for all the accusation that John Aubrey frittered his life away. For even though several volumes of his manuscripts have vanished since his death, there still remain nine major works to his credit, besides innumerable others less substantial.
Many scholars, taking their cue from Anthony Wood, have nonetheless dismissed Aubrey as of little importance: but the fault lies much more in their misunderstanding of his talents, than in his lack of them. For they have persisted in looking on Aubrey as an historian, and then running him down for his shortcomings in that field: whereas if one accepts James Bryce’s dictum that “the secret of historical composition is to know what to neglect,” it is obvious that Aubrey cannot be considered as an historian, for his genius was for collection, rather than selection. But a poor historian may be nonetheless a fine historical scholar, and the vividness of his stories and the pith of his quotations shows the very real skill and scholarship that Aubrey applied to his task. For though he has often been condemned for his unreliability, the charge is once again based on muddled thinking: he was sometimes inaccurate, it is true but he was never untruthful, and the distinction is a most important one. For Aubrey’s belief in astrology in no wise affected his trustworthiness on other subjects, as Malone pointed out so clearly in the next century. “If the representation attempted to be given of this ingenious and unfortunate gentleman were just and well founded,” he said, “if it were true that every one who is weak in one place must necessarily be weak in all; that all those persons who in the last century were idle enough to put their faith in judicial astrology, and to give credit to preternatural appearances of the dead, were fools; and their judgement or testimony of no value on any subject whatever, however unconnected with these weaknesses; then, in this large list of ninnies, must we class, with Mr. Aubrey, the accomplished and literate Charles the First; the grave and judicious Clarendon; the witty Duke of Buckingham; the fertile and ingenious Dryden; and many other names of equal celebrity:—they must all ‘bench by his side,’ and must be set down as persons not capable of forming a true judgement on any matter whatsoever presented to them, and wholly unworthy of credit.” Aubrey summed up his own position perfectly when he wrote in his life of Hobbes: But one may say of him, as one sayes of Jos. Scaliger, that where he erres, he erres so ingeniosely, that one had rather erre with him then hitt the mark with Clavius.
No one, however, has tried to deny Aubrey’s skill as a writer: and when he himself asked, Is my English style well enough? even Anthony Wood felt bound to answer “’Tis well,” instead of falling hard upon him as he usually did for his queries. “You should never ask these questions, but do them out of hand. You have time enough,” was a more typical response.
Time, which is as kind to books as it is to wine, has even added to the quality of Aubrey’s style; for the two and a half centuries that have passed since his death have caused Aubrey’s work to mature in two separate ways. “There is no beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion,” Bacon has said and it is in this direction that the years have had their first effect. Words, no less than men, have a history of their own, and in reading Aubrey after so great a lapse of time, the sharpness of every phrase and sentence is particularly striking. Unblunted by use, bare of acquired meanings and monotonous echoes, the words affect us with the freshness of a foreign tongue, and like a foreign language, they make everything seem doubly significant. The second effect of time is quite different. It is said of Antiquaries, they wipe off the mouldinesse they digge, and remove the rubbish, Aubrey remarked disapprovingly, and the trivialities that he therefore insisted, against the advice of all his friends, on including in his works, have now become their greatest strength. As he moves slowly through the darkness of his vanished century, bringing one person after another into a ring of light, the contemporary details, which he had jotted down so casually, bring the very noise of the seventeenth century into our ears. Through him one gets the most vivid sense of the presence of the past, of that feeling which Rossetti summed up when he wrote:
“As much as in a hundred years she’s dead
Yet is today the day on which she died.”
For Aubrey’s writing was addressed not to the mind alone, but to the imagination, and the unerring skill with which he chose just that episode in a man’s life when his personality was most extravagantly in bloom, gives even the shortest of his biographies a vividness which has never been excelled. Thomas Fuller, he says, was of a middle stature; strong sett; curled haire; a very working head, in so much that, walking and meditating before dinner, he would eate-up a penny loafe, not knowing that he did it. His naturall memorie was very great, to which he added the Art of Memorie: he would repeat to you forwards a
nd backwards all the signes from Ludgate to Charing-crosse. And his technique was so perfect that he was able to render precisely the effect that he wished to produce, even in a single sentence. William Cartwright’s son having many children lives not handsomely and haz lost his Learning, he says, and similar examples of his skill are unending:—Mr. Philips, author of Montelion and Don Juan Lamberto, is very happy at Jiggish Poetry and Gypsies and Ballads—Mariana Morgan. She is a swidging lustie woman—Nicholas Mercator is of a soft temper, of great temperance (amat Veneram aliquantum): of a prodigious invention, and will be acquainted (familiarly) with no body—Mr. Gore. He is a fidling peevish fellow—Thomas Willis, M.D. was middle stature: darke brindle haire (like a red pig) stammered much—the Duke of Monmouth’s mother: Mrs. Lucy Walters, who could deny no body—Robert Greville, Lord Brookes, was killed at the Siege of Lichfield, March the 2d (St. Chad’s day, to whom the Church is dedicated) 1643 by a Minister’s sonne, born deafe and dumbe, out of the church. He was armed cap à pied; only his Bever was open—William Sanderson dyed at Whitehall (I was then there): went out like a spent candle: died before Dr. Holder could come to him with the Sacrament—William Outram was a tall spare leane pale consumptive man; wasted himself much, I presume, by frequent preaching—Sir Francis Stuart was a Sea-captaine and (I thinke) he was one Summer, a Vice or Rere-Admirall. He was a learned Gentleman, and one of the Club at the Mermayd, in Fryday street, with Sir Walter Ralegh, etc, of that Sodalitie: Heroes and Witts of that time—Richard Martin, Recorder of London, was a very handsome man, a gracefull speaker, facetious, and well-beloved. I thinke he dyed of a merry Symposiaque with his fellow-Witts. He was Recorder but a moneth before his death—George Sandys, Poet, lies buried in the Chancel neer the dore on the south side, but without any remembrance or stone: which is pitty so sweet a Swan should lye so ingloriously.
Aubrey’s skill was so great, in fact, that he could conjure a living being out of a mere list of facts. Mrs. Abigail Sloper borne at Broad Chalke, near Salisbury, A.D. 1648. Pride; lechery; ungratefull to her father; maried; runne distracted; recovered. And again: Richard Stokes, M.D. His father was Fellow of Eaton College. He was bred there and at King’s College. Scholar to Mr. W. Oughtred for Mathematiques (Algebra). He made himselfe mad with it, but became sober again, but I feare like a crackt-glasse. Became a Roman-catholique: maried unhappily at Liege, dog and catt, etc. Became a Sott. Dyed in Newgate, Prisoner for debt April 1681.
As the stories lengthen, the impression becomes ever clearer. John Partridge, the son of an honest waterman at Putney in Surrey. He was taught to read, and a little to write. He was bound Apprentice to a Shoemaker; where he was kept hard to his Trade. At 18 he gott him a Lillie’s Grammar, and Goldman’s Dictionary, and a Latin Bible, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He is of indefatigable industrie and in a few yeares he made himself a competent master of the Latin tongue, well enough to reade any Astrologicall book, and quickly became a master of that Science. He then studyed the Greek tongue, and also the Hebrew, to neither of which he is a stranger. He then studyed good Authors in Physique, and intends to make that his Profession and Practyse: but is yet (1680) a shoemaker in Convent Garden—Mr. Attorney Generali Noy was a great Lawyer and a great Humorist. There is a world of merry stories of him. A Countrey clowne asked for a good Inne, and he bids him ride into Lincoln’s Inne, and asked if his Horse went to hay or to grasse. He caused the Breeches of a Bencher of Lincolne’s Inne to be taken-in by a Tayler and made him believe that he had the Dropsie. Another time Noy and Pine of Lincolne’s lnne went afoot to Barnet with clubbes in their hands, like countrey-fellowes. They went to the Red Lyon Inne; the people of the house were afrayd to trust them, fearing they might not pay—Richard Meriton: his true name was Head. He had been amongst the Gipsies. He looked like a knave with his gogling eies. He could transforme himselfe into any shape. Brake 2 or 3 times. Was at last a Bookeseller in Little Britaine, or towards his later end. He maintained himselfe by Scribbling: 20s. per sheet. He was drowned goeing to Plymouth by long Sea about 1676, being about 50 yeares of age—Saint Dunstan. He was a Somersetshire Gentleman. He was a great Chymist. The storie of his pulling the Devill by the nose with his tongues in his Laboratorie, was famous in church-windowes. Meredith Lloyd had, about the biginning of the Civill Warres, a MS. of this Saint’s concerning Chymistrey, and sayes that there are severall MSS. of His up and downe in England. He could make a fire out of Gold, with which he could sett any combustible matter on fire at a great distance. Meredith Lloyd tells me that, three or 400 yeares ago, Chymistry was in a greater perfection, much, then now; their proces was then more Seraphique and Universall: now they looke only after medicines. The mediæval hunt for the Philosopher’s Stone had only recently been abandoned, however. Even in the previous century, Aubrey reported, Thomas Charnock attained the secret from his master at Salisbury close, who dying left his worke with him. He lost it by fireing his Tabernacle on a New yeare’s day. About this time being 28 yeares of Age, he learned the secret againe of the Prior of Bathe. He continued it nine monthes; was within a month of his reckoning; the crowe’s head began to appear black. But once again the elusive secret escaped his grasp, for a friend told Aubrey “that he kept a fire in, divers yeares; that his daughter lived with him; that once he was gone forth, and by her neglect (whome he trusted it with in his abscence) the fire went out and so all his worke was lost: the Brazen head was very neare comeing to speake, but so was he disappointed.”
Sometimes Aubrey helped out one of his purely factual lives with a single story, and together they provide the complete portrait of a man. Sir Mathew Hale, Judge, he wrote, 1609, natus November 1st in the evening, his father then being at his prayers. 1640, maried the first time. (He was a great Cuckold.) 1656, His second manage to his servant Mayd, Mary. 1660, made Lord Chief Baron. 1671, Lord Chiefe Justice of England, 18 May. 1676, Christmas day, he dyed. I remember, Aubrey told Anthony Wood some years later, about 1646 (or 1647) that Mr. John Maynard (now Sir John, and serjeant) came into Middle Temple hall, from Westminster-hall, weary with business, and hungry, when we had newly dined. He sate-downe by Mr. Bennet Hoskyns (the only son of Serjeant Hoskyns, the Poet) since Baronet, and some others; who having made an end of their Commons, fell unto various Discourse, and what was the meaning of the Text (Rom. v. 7.) ‘For a just man one would dare to die; but for a good man one would willingly die.’ They askt Mr. Maynard what was the difference between a just man and a good man. He was beginning to eate, and cryed:—Hoh! you have eaten your dinners, and now have leasure to discourse; I have not. He had eate but a Bitt or two when he reply’d:—I’le tell you the difference presently: serjeant Rolle is a just man, and Mathew Hale is a good man; and so fell to make an end of his dinner. And there could not be a better interpretation of this Text. For serjeant Rolle was just, but by nature penurious; and his wife made him worse: Mathew Hale was not only just, but wonderfully Charitable and open handed, and did not sound a trumpet neither, as the Hypocrites doe.
The same Serjeant figures in one of Aubrey’s other stories. The Lady Hele gave by her Will 800 pounds per annum to be layd out for Charitable Uses and by the advice and prudence of Serjeant Maynard. He did order it according to the best of his understanding, and yet he sayd that he haz lived to see every one of these Benefactions abused. Mankind, even then, was apt to treat a favour as a right, as the following unhappy tale shows only too clearly. Madam Curtin, a good Fortune of 3000 pounds, daughter to Sir William Curtin, the great Merchant, lately married her footman, who, not long after marriage, beates her, getts her money, and ran away: a double disaster for the poor lady, for even in those days servants were almost as hard to come by as another fortune. The dayly concurse of Servants out of the Country to London, makes Servants Wages deare in the Countrey, and makes scarcity of Labourers, Aubrey complained angrily. Mr. Fabian Philips affirmes to me that when he came first to London sc. 1619, an ordinary servant-mayds wages was but sixteen shillings per annum and now tis 3, or 4 pounds per annum.
Aubrey’s were the first biographies that did not point a moral; in fact, they were really a record of his unselfconscious gossip with his friends. For he would have agreed with Hazlitt, who liked “a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about,” and he had, like W. H. Mallock, “the very highest opinion of scandal. It is founded on the most sacred of things—that is, Truth, and it is built up by the most beautiful of things—that is, Imagination.” But Aubrey was so kind a man that his gossip rarely turned to scandal, and his wit; in Disraeli’s phrase, was excessively good-natured, and, like champagne, not only sparkled, but was sweet. Will this not give offence? Aubrey asked on more than one occasion, to be answered by Anthony Wood: “Perhaps no.” John Ray, however, offered more detailed advice: “Whatever you may conceive may give Offence, may by the wording of it be so softned and sweetned as to take off the Edge of it, as Pills are gilded to make them less ungrateful.”